The Pentop computer.

OK, for over a year I was looking at the Leap Frog Fly pen. I drooled over the concept for the whole time. The hell with the Tweens it was aimed at. This was for 40+YO geeks.

Finally the anouncement came out last September. Details were out. It looked great.

Then I saw the cost of ownership. Expensive paper, and no hookup to your computer. What you stored in the pen stayed there. No note app that let you upload your work to your computer. Plus the cost of paper is way too expensive.

So I shelved the idea of owning one.

I was at Fry's a while back and saw this logitech device. Looked it up and was more impressed. It is meant to take notes, write emails and to-dos, calendar events... And upload these to your mail app, outlook, word and other apps. This was more impressive.

Now the paper costs. LeapFrog, logitech and Maxcel all license the digital paper from Anoto. They have the patent on the micro dots the pen reads to track what you are writing. But now instead of just buying paper from LeapFrog, you have 3M Post-its, 2 note pads from Mead and notepads from Collins using the Logitech Brand. More licensees means the cost go down as more paper companies jump on the bandwagon and more people buy these devices.

At this time it is $8 for an 8.5x11 pad with 64 double sided sheets. So I will use both sides of the paper at this cost.

At work I tend to use about one pad a month. Do cost of ownership is about $100 per year. If this really saves me the time of typing in the notes I just wrote down, then this can be worth it.

Plus there is the cool factor. After I buy one, I'll obviously post a review.